Fortnite Creative Mode is like Playground times 100: 'It's super early and rough but it’s a great start'

Fortnite Creative Mode is the ultimate manifestation of the "just build LOL" lifestyle and you can give it a try starting Thursday. Epic officially unveiled the new mode in a post on its official website this morning, though the announcement followed an apparent leak of a YouTuber's extensive preview which has since been pulled down, according to Fortnite Intel.

Sounds like a whole lot of trouble when there's already Fortnite Playground Mode, right? Well, it turns out Playground was a puny prototype compared to what Epic has planned for Creative. Rather than appearing as a Limited-Time Mode, Creative will become a third top-level option alongside Battle Royale and Save the World. Load in on your own or with friends and you'll get access to a private island where you can fly around and build with infinite resources using basic materials or prefab structures, limited only by your imagination… and a "memory used" meter. Oh, also you can fly.

Once you've built something cool, you can set up server rules to run your own custom team deathmatches, free-for-alls, obstacle courses, or in-depth dinosaur roleplay sessions. You and your buds can knock the hell out of your beautiful creation and it will always go right back to its pristine form as soon as you end the match. Also, you can save and load your creations between play sessions - a big improvement for folks who liked making up their own games in Playground but had to rebuild everything every time.

Battle Pass owners can start building on their own private Creative Mode islands on Thursday, and they can invite their friends (Battle Pass or no) in to play as well. All players will get free access to a private island a week later on December 13. Just don't expect it to be a super polished experience yet, as Epic creative director Donald Mustard warns.

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Whether you're excited to get building in Creative or are more of a "just shoot LOL" kind of player, keep your eyes peeled: apparently more news is coming very soon.

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Find more to look forward to with our roundup of all things Fortnite season 7.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.